Speed up gradle build in multidex application

Question

My application has a bunch of librarys that are essential that is why I was forced to use multidex support library and it works nicely. But where the problem shows is in the gradle buid speed. It takes on average 2minutes to build and when I am developing and testing this is quite annoying.

Is there a way to speed up my debug builds?

Buy more memory - 16 GB at least. I had 8 GB and after upgrading to 16 GB build time has decreased from 60 to 30 sec. — ivan.panasiuk, Feb 05 '16 at 15:49

score 60 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

60

You can speed-up your development builds by specifying the minimum SDK version = 21.
Official documentation includes a whole section about that.

Example (from documentation):

android {
    productFlavors {
        // Define separate dev and prod product flavors.
        dev {
            // dev utilizes minSDKVersion = 21 to allow the Android gradle plugin
            // to pre-dex each module and produce an APK that can be tested on
            // Android Lollipop without time consuming dex merging processes.
            minSdkVersion 21
        }
        prod {
            // The actual minSdkVersion for the application.
            minSdkVersion 14
        }
    }
          ...
    buildTypes {
        release {
            runProguard true
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android.txt'),
                                                 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
}
dependencies {
  compile 'com.android.support:multidex:1.0.0'
}

Once you added the product flavors, you can use the devDebug task (instead of default debug task) for your development builds:
- from command line: run ./gradlew installDevDebug
- from Android Studio: open Build Variants window and select the devDebug build variant.

You should, of course, work against a device whose SDK >= 21.

There's also a solution for those who don't want to use flavors. As suggested in this gist, dynamically calculate the minSdkVersion value:

int minSdk = hasProperty('devMinSdk') ? devMinSdk.toInteger() : 14
apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

android {
    ...
    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion minSdk
        ...
    }
}

In this example, we're checking if devMinSdk property defined, and if true - we're using it. Otherwise, we default to 14.

How do we pass devMinSdk value to build script? Two options:

Using command line:

./gradlew installDebug -PdevMinSdk=21

Using Android Studio preferences:

Go to Preferences (Settings on Windows) -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Compiler -> put -PdevMinSdk=21 in Command-line Options text box.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

Community

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answered Jun 12 '15 at 09:17

Alex Lipov

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I cannot do that if I am developing for lower SDKs. – Tadej Vengust Jun 12 '15 at 12:04
@Tadej What do you mean? You don't support devices running SDK 21 at all (that is, your max sdk < 21)? – Alex Lipov Jun 12 '15 at 12:08
No I mean I am using a device that has a lower version of android so I cannot debug as sdk 21 on it. – Tadej Vengust Jun 12 '15 at 12:14
@Tadej I see.. It seems that now you have a good reason to upgrade ;) – Alex Lipov Jun 12 '15 at 12:17
is just really grave to set min SDK to 21 as it's targetting only lolipop which is 12% of all Android devices. – Hugo Gresse Jun 12 '15 at 15:46
9

@HugoGresse Read carefully before downvoting - you have to set minimum SDK to 21 only for **development** builds. In any case you'll have to test your release build on large suite of devices across all the SDK levels that you support. – Alex Lipov Jun 12 '15 at 17:00
sorry @AlexLipov maybe you can clarify you're answer to be much for descriptive – Hugo Gresse Jun 15 '15 at 07:26
@HugoGresse The official documentation (that linked from the post) includes all the juicy details. Nevertheless, I've edited the answer - added a configuration sample. – Alex Lipov Jun 15 '15 at 07:54
Use flavorDimensions so you don't have to change your existing flavors. Works great. – enl8enmentnow Aug 05 '15 at 21:42
What does it mean to `use the devDebug task for your development builds`? How do I use it for my development builds? – Adam Johns Sep 01 '15 at 12:39
@AdamJohns Edited the answer, let me know if it requires any further explanation. – Alex Lipov Sep 01 '15 at 13:01
The previous compilations to 21 , do not work, seems to have a bigger priority . – Apr 26 '16 at 15:30

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 12 '16 at 10:40

Recently build cache was introduced by team working on Android Gradle plugin. You can enable it by adding android.enableBuildCache=true to gradle.properties.

More info here http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/build-cache

For me it increased incremental build times by ~30 seconds.

It doesn't work with legacy multidex (com.android.support:multidex) introduced as part of support library, so it's suitable only if your minSDK >= 21. You can set it only for your your development builds and do release builds with minSDK < 21.

It also works without multidexing enabled.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 11 '15 at 09:32

1

Android Studio 1.3 (currently in Preview 3) is using a new build system which improved gradle build time (really, like 10-30x faster).

More information in the Live Session at Google I/O 2015

answered Jun 11 '15 at 09:32

Hugo Gresse

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So wait until the stable version is released? Really hope it helps for multidex aplications as well. – Tadej Vengust Jun 11 '15 at 09:51
you can also try do download it so see if it has improved your build time. – Hugo Gresse Jun 11 '15 at 11:06
Can anyone confirm that AS1.3P3 is actually 10-30x faster when building multidex targets? – Valerio Santinelli Jul 17 '15 at 09:16
Android studio surelly not, you will have to use the Gradle Android Plugin `classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:1.3.0-beta4'` to try @ValerioSantinelli – Hugo Gresse Jul 17 '15 at 09:29
@HugoGresse I tried the beta gradle plugin in my project and the build time decreased of about 20%. Not much but still something. – Valerio Santinelli Jul 18 '15 at 10:30

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 30 '15 at 09:56

1

Multidexing uses more memory. As you get closer to your max heap size in Java you'll find Java spends more time doing GC than it does doing any real work, this can slow things down a lot.

I'd strongly recommend increasing the max heap size when using multidex. Add the following to the android closure in your build.gradle file to make the max heap size 4GB (Make it smaller if you wish):

dexOptions {
    javaMaxHeapSize "4g"
}

answered Sep 30 '15 at 09:56

Will Calderwood

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+1, I get a noticeable speedup even with MinSdkVersion = 21 by increasing this to 2g. Also you want to make your Gradle heap size an extra half-gigabyte larger than this (2560m in this case) so that (multi)dex runs in the same process. – Adam P. Goucher Jul 05 '17 at 11:42

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 31 '16 at 02:06

0

Changing MinSdk to 21 made everything back to normal for me.Now everything compiles in like 6s

answered Mar 31 '16 at 02:06

Santhej Kallada

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 08 '17 at 21:49

0

This is no longer needed with the latest Android Studio 3.0

answered Nov 08 '17 at 21:49

N Jay

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score -1 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 11 '15 at 09:29

-1

Go in setting , search compiler , type "--offline" in Command line options and than compile.

answered Jun 11 '15 at 09:29

Anand Savjani

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Tried but no difference – Tadej Vengust Jun 11 '15 at 09:45
checked on compile independent module in parallel and than try it – Anand Savjani Jun 11 '15 at 09:53
1

still no notable difference :( – Tadej Vengust Jun 11 '15 at 10:00

Speed up gradle build in multidex application

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